Installing the AWS SAM CLI on Windows

Follow these steps to install and configure the prerequisites for using the AWS SAM command line interface (CLI) on your Windows host:

1. Create an AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS) account.

2. Configure IAM permissions and AWS credentials.

3. Install Docker. Note: Docker is a prerequisite only for testing your application locally.

4. Install the AWS SAM CLI.

Step 1: Create an AWS account

If you don't already have an AWS account, see aws.amazon.com and choose Create an AWS Account. For detailed instructions, see Create and Activate an AWS Account.

Step 2: Configure IAM permissions and AWS credentials

The IAM user that you use with AWS SAM must have sufficient permissions to make necessary AWS service calls and manage AWS resources. The simplest way to ensure that a user has sufficient permissions is to grant administrator privileges to them. For more information, see Creating your first IAM admin user and group in the IAM User Guide.

Note

If you don't want to grant administrator privileges to users who use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), you can grant restricted sets of permissions to them. For more information, see Permissions.

In addition, to enable the AWS SAM CLI to make AWS service calls, you must set up AWS credentials. For more information, see Setting up AWS credentials.

Step 3: Install Docker

Note

Docker is a prerequisite only for testing your application locally and for building deployment packages using the --use-container flag. If you don't plan to use these features initially, you can skip this section or install Docker at a later time.

Docker is an application that runs containers on your Linux machines. AWS SAM provides a local environment that's similar to AWS Lambda to use as a Docker container. You can use this container to build, test, and debug your serverless applications.

To run serverless projects and functions locally with the AWS SAM CLI, you must have Docker installed and working. The AWS SAM CLI uses the DOCKER_HOST environment variable to contact the Docker daemon. The following steps describe how to install, configure, and verify a Docker installation to work with the AWS SAM CLI.

1. Install Docker.

   Docker Desktop supports the most recent Windows operating system. For legacy versions of Windows, the Docker Toolbox is available. Choose your version of Windows for the correct Docker installation steps:

   • To install Docker for Windows 10, see Install Docker Desktop for Windows.

   • To install Docker for older versions of Windows, see Install Docker Toolbox on Windows.

2. Configure your shared drives.

   The AWS SAM CLI requires that the project directory, or any parent directory, is listed in a shared drive. In some cases you must share your drive in order for Docker to function properly.

   • If you're using Windows 10 in Hyper-V mode, see Docker File Sharing.

   • To share drives on older versions of Windows, see Add Shared Directories.

3. Verify the installation.

   After Docker is installed, verify that it's working. Also confirm that you can run Docker commands from the command line (for example, docker ps). You don't need to install, fetch, or pull any containers—the AWS SAM CLI does this automatically as required.

If you run into issues installing Docker, see the Logs and troubleshooting section of the Docker installation guide for additional troubleshooting tips.

Step 4: Install the AWS SAM CLI

Windows Installer (MSI) files are the package installer files for the Windows operating system.

Follow these steps to install the AWS SAM CLI using the MSI file.

1. Install the AWS SAM CLI 64-bit.

   Note

   If you operate on 32-bit system, see Installing AWS SAM CLI on 32-bit Windows.

2. Verify the installation.

   After completing the installation, verify it by opening a new command prompt or PowerShell prompt. You should be able to invoke sam from the command line.

   sam --version

   You should see output like the following after successful installation of the AWS SAM CLI:

    
    SAM CLI, version 1.15.0
                   

3. Install Git.

   To download sample applications using the sam init command, you must also install Git. For instructions, see Installing Git.

You're now ready to start development.

Next steps

You're now ready to begin building your own serverless applications using AWS SAM! If you want to start with sample serverless applications, choose one of the following links:

• Tutorial: Deploying a Hello World application – Step-by-step instructions to download, build, and deploy a simple serverless application.

• AWS SAM example applications in GitHub – Sample applications in the AWS SAM GitHub repository that you can further experiment with.